dh earns 22000 a year means 1300 per month in hand - no prospects to improve his salary - diffcult to accept

we have small 2 kids. dh about 40 works full time; leaving home at 7.00 and coming back 5.00 pm. bringing 1300 monthly into bank account. I earn more and generally believe in career development, but with my dh this has been the same of 8 years and i do not see any motivation in him to improve. can someone point me into the right direction - how can I accept that HE does not want to improve his development and salary and he is going to stay for another 25 years in the same job. I do not see it changing and find it hard to accept

I understand. Some people are ambitious and driven, some aren't. I am and I love that DH is too; I would not be suited to a man happy to stay in the same job for 25 years. IMO you need to talk properly and perhaps do as Morebeta suggests

He has a stable job, earns what for many in dual income households is a very decent amount, a pension, hours that mean he'll see a lot more of school age kids than most-when I get home at 5 I find there's time to do jobs, cook tea and talk to the kids-bliss.If he's happy I think you're being desperately unfair.If you see there's better quality of life/time management to be had from him going part time eg the kids are in nursery so you'd save a day's fees, get some housework/admin done/ spend some time with kids: then by all means suggest this, but a marriage is a partnership not a dictatorship.Go be driven yourself and stop trying to live your life and his.

it is not just about earning potential - it is about having initiative in life. i feel like I have to push my dh for things to happen - starting from shopping for family and ending with his work situation

I think you are being unfair. you can't just decide to change your husbands life probably not for the better just because he isn't all that career driven. climbing the career ladder Is all well and good but the higher you get the more responsibility and longer working hours. what if he doesn't want all that?

Surely it's about work/home life balance. Dh is on less than 19k and now stuck at deputy manager level in his job. He used to be manager on 26k BUT he was stressed and hardly home and was on call overnight too which meant no downtime. 4 years ago we decided to cut his pay and job title and I went back to work too. We both now work 40+ hours a week earning 21k between us but I'm home with our children and dh has 2 days off a week and also has good hours in a job he can leave 'at work' iykwim. He has no desire to go back to management level and I don't want him too!

Yes mutt i do think she would have made different choices if she got to do it again. I think it only hit her when we were around 16/17 and always either studying, at sport after school or out at weekends that she had missed out on what could have been some greAt family time. She was always stressed too. She certainly didnt appear to be enjoying the pressure she was putting on herself.

Boohooy, sorry about your mother. It does not sound like she had a balanced approach in your growing up years.

But just because someone is ambitious at work does not mean they end up neglecting their family. You can decide that within the hours that you are out of the house at work, you will apply your time effectively and to maximum advancement of your career and earning potential.

That could mean doing courses, being visible at meetings, giving presentations, offering to take on more/different responsibilities, changing departments or changing jobs. Things that require initiative and strategic planning, rather than plodding along head down in a rut.

Of course not everyone is like that. But we all prefer and value different things, including the OP.

I feel sorry for your dh. If you were happy doing something and someone came along telling you that you must do more and making pushing for more a condition of the relationship with them then I think that's highly unreasonable.

Not everyone wants a high flying highly paid job.

Me for example.... I used to be a senior marketing manager in London. I was earning 35k and facing a new position earning 45k plus when I realised how desperately bored and unhappy I was so I literally chucked it all in and moved from London to Norfolk.

I then worked part time at a hotel as it was all that was available and quite enjoyed myself and then met dh. I then had ds and didn't want to work anymore so now we manage on dh's salary of well under 22k!

Do I have any plans to return to work? Nope. Never..not unless I'm dragged kicking and screaming. I get an odd buzz out of managing our budget and bidding on everything on eBay. It's tight yes but there is so much more to life than money, and I know that even more so after experiencing the type of highly ambitious well paid career you'd like your dh to have.

Actually, depends where they are in the country, £22k in the South East is not a well paying job, it's about £10k less than you'd pay a receptionist in most of London. I think we have an office junior on about that.

The general lack of innitiative is going to be hard if you're different - feeling you have to "mother" your DH as well as your DCs is poision for a relationship unless you are the sort of person who likes to take that sort of role. You aren't the first person who's found differences in priorities/attitudes, while not a big deal before DCs come along, are a huge issue once they are there.

Do you generally feel he's not pulling his weight? Not just income, just generally in the relationship? Would you feel comfortable that if he went 4 days a week, when the DCs were at school/pre-school that day, he'd do the other household admin without you requiring to leave him a list of things to be sorted/thought about?

Is it that he's happy to do what he's told too, but not think about what might be useful/needed?

Some times that can be changed, little by little, but it's going to be a long slog, only you know if it's worth it, but staying as you are, you'll get more and more annoyed and it'll ruin what you've got if you're losing respect for him. Few marriages survive once one side has lost respect for the other.

thank you for supportive comments. I will chat to my dh what his interests are ...maybe it needs to be a long talk to make a plan and agree on how we want to live. generally, I do feel that I have to leave the list of things to be done...so he is just doing it but not initiating/ organising. maybe I need to sit with him and again decide who is responsibel for what so that he has responsibilities and I do not need to monitor/ constantly remind him

It depends where you're based and how you want to live. But it sounds to me as if what really bothers the OP is that her husband is happy for things to stay the same for the next 25 years. That's a long time.

I'm shocked that people are saying 22k is a low salary! Granted its not a particully high one, but it is very reasonable!! I'm on 12k and my partner is on 14k, and we are both still on more than minimum wage!!!!!

Lj8893 - I guess it comes down to what it's being compared too - I would assume in London/South East, for most office jobs, that would be the pay range for someone very junior. If they are London based, and he's earning that after 8 years experience, then he's not really progressing at all.

He's not working part time, so the wage isn't prorataed down or anything.

It also depends on what you want out of life and what you feel you are capable of and should be striving for. I agree it might be grim to be the OP's husband. If you are doing your best and you are happy and fulfilled at work and you like what your joint incomes can buy for your family, it must be annoying to be pestered to become ambitious and so on.

But if you like go getting types and want to move up and up and buy a bigger house and all the many things money can buy and your partner seems to be cruising along and not bothered about the things you care about, that can be annoying too.

I don't think either are at fault exactly but it could be that having children has prompted a change of values. And that needs airing.